Light a candle of love

My children are playing together quietly in the other room. I hear them whispering to each other. They are playing nicely.

My children.

They are 6, 4 & 2. This doesn’t happen often. The quiet playing nicely thing. I have a minute so I thought I’d write.

I have gone quiet since last Friday. Since Newtown. Since the shooting. It has weighed so heavily on my heart, there are moments I can’t even bear it. There are many posts in my head that relate to it but I can’t get them out right now. I probably won’t.

There is a post about grief and the holidays. My brother died when I was 23 and the holidays are fraught with mixed emotions.

There is a post about losing a child so quickly. I was living at home when my brother died and, apart from my own grief, watching my parents go through theirs was just about the most awful thing I have ever experienced.

There is a post about guns. I don’t have toy guns in my house. My oldest has asked Santa for a Nerf gun. I told him that Santa knows Mommy doesn’t like toy guns. He’s still hopeful. My friend’s husband is a State Trooper, my BIL is in the army. There are actual guns in their houses. I get it. I bought my nephew a gift card for paint ball for Christmas. Now I can’t give it to him. I can’t.

There is a post about teachers. No there actually is a post about teachers. Please honor your teachers everyday. They deserve it.

There is a post about mortality. When I was a kid I was so afraid that my parents would die and leave me. I felt it so acutely that I remember it to this day. We have a very large family and I had been to a bunch of funerals at a young age. It was terrifying to me.

There is a post about my decision to have children because it was a decision. Watching what my parent’s went through after we lost Dan was something I was positive I didn’t want to go through. The easiest way to ensure that was just to not have them right. Oy.

So there are many and I can’t write any of it. I am too jumbled and now I have the flu. The other night I took something for it that made me stay up instead of fall asleep. I kept thinking about Newtown and those teachers and those 6 year olds.

Six.

My baby is six.

If that young man had come into my baby’s classroom he would have been excited to see him. Cool he’s dressed like an army guy! He has a gun! And then…I couldn’t shake that thought and still can’t. My baby wouldn’t have run for cover if he saw him. It a grotesque and awful thought that will not leave my head.

It’s all just too much. There is so much in the news about it. The funerals, gun control, the NRA, mental health, guns for teachers and on and on. I can’t turn it on until late because I still haven’t told my oldest – the six year old, about it. I am praying that he doesn’t hear it over the holiday. I decided that he doesn’t need to know it until he needs to know it. There is so much awful in the world and I need to present it to him in doses. This particular brand of awful can wait a bit.

There is also so much good in the world. SO much.

The support that Newtown has received in the week after is nothing short of incredible. People from all over the country and all over the world are reaching out to them. But also we’re reaching out locally and in our own homes. People are performing 26 random act of kindness (#26RAK) to honor those lost. We need to be supportive in our communities and loving in our homes, always. Not just in moments of madness.

And then there’s that. We have to stop the madness…but that’s another post as well.

They are whispering about Santa now. About what they might get.

My heart is full of love and it aches for those families in Newtown that have one less whisper, one less patter down the stairs, one less shriek of delight at the presents that Santa brought. For those that don’t celebrate it’s just another day without their babies another day that they muster the will to go on for their other children, because they need them. They need each other. For those families that lost grown children, the love of their life, or their mother on that awful day they try to figure out how to move through the world without them.

I will light a candle for your babies and for you and wish you peace, Newtown. We all do.

hugs

I would love it if you would light a candle for them too. Give just a moment to think of them and then go on and have a wonderful day with your families. Honor them well by honoring your own. Peace.